The present invention relates to mobile vehicles. More particularly, the invention relates to on-highway motor vehicles designed to operate at highway speeds.
Special terms used herein are defined as follows:
Forward: Toward the front end of the vehicle.
Aft: Toward the rear end of the vehicle.
Highway speeds: Speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour.
Extended motor vehicle: A motor vehicle having an elongated, integral chassis.
Elongated: Substantially longer than a conventional automobile; having a length of from about fifteen to about forty feet.
Integral: Unitary; not segmented; not formed e.g. like a tractor-trailer.
Axle: A shaft which connects wheels located on opposite sides of a frame which is supported by the shaft.
Short axle: A shaft which connects a pair of wheels on the same side of the frame.
Spindle: A short conical shaft on which a wheel is mounted.
Driving axle: An axle that is power-driven.
Fixed axle: An axle permanently aligned in a particular configuration with respect to the frame.
Steerable axle: An axle which is capable of changing orientation with respect to the frame.
Tandem axles: A pair of axles very near one another; not spaced apart or separated by a distance of more than about two or three feet.
Spread axles or spread-tandem axles: Axles spaced apart and separated by a distance of about ten feet.
Fixed wheel: A wheel the orientation of which remains unchanged with respect to an axle on which the wheel is mounted.
Steerable wheel: A wheel which is capable of changing direction with respect to and independently of a fixed axle to which the wheel is connected by a spindle.
Much of the background information relating to the present invention may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,103 to Ducote, and in application Ser. No. 130,470, filed Oct. 1, 1993, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Mobile vehicles encompassed by the present invention and present application include recreation-vehicle (RV) motor homes, trucks, busses, moving vans, and passenger vans.
Axles with forcibly-steered wheels are disposed at the front ends of automotive vehicles. The wheels are manually steered by a driver by means of a steering wheel. The axles are designed to have a single wheel with a tire at each end of the axle. Rotary movement of the steering wheel causes the ends of the steerable spindles on which the wheels are mounted to move forward or rearward. The wheels mounted on the spindles change lateral alignment with the vehicle. This causes the vehicle to steer to the right or to the left.